Satish Viswanathan, Personal Blog

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Category Archives: General Musings

Excerpts from Ratan Tata’s speech at the Nano unveiling ceremony- a portion

Today’s story started some years ago when I observed families riding on two wheelers, the father driving a scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife sitting behind him holding a baby and I asked myself whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all weather form of transport for such a family. A vehicle that could be affordable and low cost enough to be within everyone’s reach, a people’s car, built to meet all safety standards, designed to meet or exceed emission norms and be low in pollution and high in fuel efficiency. This then was the dream we set ourselves to achieve. Many said this dream could not be achieved. Some scuffed at what we would produce, perhaps a vehicle comprising two scooters attached together or perhaps an unsafe rudimentary vehicle, a poor excuse for a car. Let me assure you and also assure our critics that the car we have designed and we will be presenting to you today will indeed meet all the current safety requirements of a modern day car.

Nothing could stop this man’s dream and today I am a proud owner of a Nano.

What a car! Small from the outside, yet spacious outside. The best in class AC. A small turning radius and can be parked in very small spaces. I am doing 90 kmph in the expressway on my way to MDI and I can ease it in and out of traffic in a way no SUV or Sedan car can. It gives me about 20 kmpl. What more can I ask for. There were some issues with the model which came out in 2011, but thankfully I have no reasons yet to doubt the 2012 model Nano .

[Edit: It is nearly 4 years I have been using this car and oh! how proud and lucky I was to buy this car. All my points above are still true and I have not yet spent a Re on its maintenance thanks to the 4 years comprehensive insurance I had bought alongwith the car.]

It was just yesterday that I had dug out my copy of the ‘I too had a Dream’ to revisit it. There were other competitors next to it like ‘Made In America’ by Sam Walton and the ‘Only the paranoid survive’ by Andy Grove. I still am at a loss of words as to why this particular book came to be picked up by me. One of the reasons I wanted to read such a book was that I wanted to read some material other than my course material from MDI. I did need a change of reading angle desperately. My natural choice should have been Sam Walton, keeping my love for Supply Chain in view and its relevance in the course I am attending. And on the other hand, our Operations Management Prof had mentioned about Andy Grove and how his great vision shaped Intel.Continue reading →

I had lost all my contacts of my earlier days.
Facebook comes to the rescue.
Nearly everyone is squatted there. Me too 🙂
It just took me one day and I am back in touch with more than 50 of my buddies.
Still have time to interact with many. But the interface is so cool that I am sure that the old familiar ways will grooooow, sloooowly.

I am not able to see what my earlier ramblings are and an isolated post is something that I am not comfortable with putting where my earlier writings are placed. Moreover, I would have liked to see my earlier posts if nothing to juice me up.

All the same perhaps I should then visit my site and then log on or open the site in a separate window, then switch between them.